Miracles do happen

No, Billy hasn't gotten hired yet (AFAIK), but I finally did. It's been a LONG 2-1/4 years. Not the most lucrative position I've ever held, but there's some growth potential, and a good chance to doing new and interesting things. Since I'm one of the alarmists for offshoring, it's only fair that I list the reasons why I got hired as opposed to farming the work out. There's 2 main reasons. First, it's apparently going to involve a lot of wandering around HQ looking at existing systems and figuring out how to enhance and secure them into an enterprise-wide coherent whole. They'd have to completely BPO before this could easily be done offshore. Secondly, they're a bunch of cheap bastards, so it's not just salaries they save money on, they also aren't using the big, expensive name-brand software systems that bigger companies standardize on. Which in turn gives less of an advantage to out-of-house work, since anybody working on this stuff will have a learning curve and will have relatively little use for the results of all that learning being recyclable for any other client. So I guess it's a niche, but as long as it pays the bills, I won't complain.

Customer surveys are for companies who didn't pay proper attention to begin with.

<blush/> Wow, that's what I call a response! Thank you one and all! I'm probably not going to ride off into the sunset here, since the issues under discussion are much bigger than just me - not only IT offshoring, but general offshoring and the likelihood that microprocessor-based automation is going to put some serious pressure on the grunt jobs that people who can't do anything else fall back on. First we had Aibo and Roomba. Now I hear they've come out with a new, smarter robot vacuum-cleaner that can play watchdog (yes, it's true, a hoover that barks at intruders!). We may end up seeing all the old folks greeting people at Wal-Mart replaced with shiny new Asimo's. The local grocery stores want to go one better and make me checkout and bag my own groceries. There are times when I fear that the only secure jobs outside of health and public safety are going to be the security guards that get paid minimum wage to ensure those Everyday Lower Prices by treating the customers like shoplifters first and revenue sources second. But I've said all that before. Truth is, worker productivity is at such high levels anymore that more people than just me are beginning to wonder if the 8-10 hour workday 5-6 days a week isn't an idea whose time has passed anyway, where companies are pursuing the illusion of greater productivity and losing the substance. BTW, I have to credit my job interviewing skills for this long-overdue change in status. It only took about 4 interviews to get the job - the killer was the 6+ month average time between interviews!

Fantastic news, Tim. But I'm not surprised, I know a tough old hand when I read his posts. You'll be a fantastic hire. Classic Systems Integration job, like what I did in my last job before getting dumped. Sorry I'm late congratulating, but I'm just back from 2 days in the hospital. Nasty fever and whatnot, but the doctors fixed me and I'm feeling better than I have for months. Best of luck. Which I know you will have, because it's not luck, it's motivation and skill.